Review Summary

Anyone looking for a dispassionate, evenhanded account of the life of Biggie Smalls, the Brooklyn-born rapper who was murdered in 1997 at the age of 24, will be disappointed, perhaps even dismayed, by “Notorious.” But why would anyone be looking for such a thing in the first place? The movie, directed by George Tillman Jr. from a script by Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker, may not be an authorized biography, but it is if anything less critical, less ambivalent, than some of Biggie’s own semi-autobiographical lyrics. The rapper’s mother, Voletta Wallace, and his friend Sean Combs are not only characters in “Notorious” but are also credited as producers. What they have produced is a messy, lively melodrama, reasonably faithful to the facts of Biggie’s life and wholeheartedly devoted to burnishing his myth.
— A. O. Scott